The Trap of Endless Novelty
Screwtape shows how the pleasure of change is corrupted into a demand for novelty: Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship. If we neglect our duty, men will be not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas. Children, until we have taught them better, will be perfectly happy with a seasonal round of games in which conkers succeed hopscotch as regularly as autumn follows summer. Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up. This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both. And again, the more rapacious this desire, the sooner it must eat up all the innocent sources of pleasure and pass on to those the Enemy forbids.
—C. S. Lewis
God designed us to enjoy the rhythm of life—the beauty of both the new and the familiar. But as C.S. Lewis warns through Screwtape Letters, that natural joy can be twisted into a restless demand for constant novelty. When we crave change for its own sake, our desire grows while our actual pleasure fades. We end up chasing more, spending more, and enjoying less.
In recovery and in life, contentment often comes from embracing life’s healthy patterns—the seasons, the small rituals, the daily gifts. When we learn to treasure the sunrise as much as the vacation, the shared meal as much as the grand celebration, we guard our hearts from the trap of endless craving. True joy isn’t found in chasing the next new thing—it’s found in noticing the blessings already in front of us. —DH
—David Hoskins, Founder & Care Guide, Sanctuary Clinics